Italy's largest mafia trial begins in 30 years

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355 members of the Ndrangheta crime syndicate and associated corrupt officials, businessmen and lawyers were put on trial at a grand trial that opened Wednesday in the southern Italian city of Lamezia Terme. They are charged with numerous violent and white-collar crimes murder, drug trafficking, racketeering, money laundering, bribery and abuse of office committed from the 1990s to 2019. During the preliminary hearing, it took three hours to read the list of the defendants. Another 92 people pleaded guilty and will be tried in a simplified manner. Among them is the lawyer Giancarlo Pittelli, a former senator from Silvio Berlusconi's Forward Italy! Party. The protagonist of the trial is the 62-year-old prosecutor Nicola Gratteri, famous in Italy. He spent most of his life under state protection. The long investigation, led by Gratteri, culminated in December 2019 with mass arrests in Italy, Germany, Switzerland and Bulgaria. I grew up in an area ruled by the mafia, he told AFP the day before. Hitchhiking to school, I periodically saw killed people on the sidelines, and the son of a well-known mafioso studied in the same class with me. Many of my childhood friends became bandits. , well, when I grew up, I decided that I had to fight it. The main target was one of the most powerful clans of the Ndrangheta, the Manchozo family. Its head, 66-year-old Uncle Luigi Manchozo, and his henchmen with nicknames like Wolf Fat Man and Blonde were in the dock. The trial takes place in a specially converted and fortified huge hall and will last from one to two years. There are more than 900 witnesses to be heard, including 58 former mafiosi an unprecedented number, given the law of silence and to study many documents and materials of expert examinations. The latest trial of this magnitude took place in Italy in 1986-1987 and ended with the conviction of 338 participants in the Sicilian Cosa Nostra. Prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borselino subsequently fell victim to mafiosi revenge.